Can't be bothered reading through the whole thread, so don't know if anyone's brought this up, but one think that was noticeable last night was how horrible the first touch of some of our players is (especially thinking here of Manny and Lia, although there were others). I know the pitch wasn't supposed to be great, but it was clear that some players were able to adjust to that.
But the point is that it's virtually impossible to transition the ball through midfield if it takes your CMs 2 seconds to just get the ball under control, before they can even start thinking where the ball's supposed to go next. In that time even in the A-league they have people on their arse, and all the passing lanes are closed off. Which means that we either end up losing the possession with alarming regularity and in dangerous areas (virtually all of the Roar chances in the first 20 came because of this), or we just end up going backwards and hoofing it 60m down the field straight to the opposition.